I recently migrated my personal site from Hugo to use another static site generator called Lume. Lume is a static site generator built for Deno. I'm not an avid or active publisher, so it was pretty easy to port most of my old blogs to the new site, as they were initially authored using markdown with consistent metadata. Using Lume's handy _data feature, which allows you to specify data that should be applied to all files in a directory, I was able to get things set up and organized with ease. The hardest issue is linked static assets such as images and scripts. This migration has prompted me to think about the longevity of my presence online, and how a consistent file structure will aid tremendously in the long term. For now, I'm very excited to have my personal site using Lume. In fact, I was a Lume early adopter, likely among its first users. It's too bad it took me this long to port over this personal project. I'm very excited to use Lume's built in CMS, a new feature it added in it's latest update (as of this post).

I made this after messing around with the processing basics. Now I use processing in many capacities as a designer. At work, I developed a custom footer component which renders a generative design of a topographic pattern, so each time the page is refreshed a new is displayed. I also deployed a drawing-board on the homepage of a friend's art portfolio site, allowing the user to invert the colors of the page by dragging the cursor around and using some built-in key commands to enhance control and creativity on the canvas.

In 2004, Google bought Keyhole Corp., a CIA-funded digital mapping company. Previously, media entities had used Keyhole to visually map and broadcast areas of Iran in conflict reports. Recognizing the software's potential, Google set to work in lowering its usage price by about 40% and expanding its data sets. In 2015 Google Earth Pro became free, providing advanced tools for things like high-resolution graphic output, demographic overlays/projections, and animations. Google earth – more specifically Earth Engine – is now an invaluable asset to researchers leveraging its APIs. Petabytes of available data have yielded some detailed and important research, like this study on high-resolution mapping of global surface water and its long-term changes that appeared in Nature in 2016. Scientific applications like this are important and admirable, but it's also great to simply zoom around the virtual globe, make animations, and play around.

Google Earth Studio has been developed for animating geospatial information to create still and video content. This dedicated app now exists to keyframe Google Earth viewport movements and create animations at a variety of frame rates & resolutions. The project is currently available as an in-browser preview, essentially a 'beta.' Users must access through a Chrome browser (like Canary), hold a google account, and request access via form submission on the Google Earth Studio website. 3D data on Google Earth has become increasingly accurate, especially in densely populated areas with large structures. As one may presume, popular landmarks like the the Eiffel Tower are modeled with a high precision. But what about the rundown Philadelphia Electric Company building?

Republic Plaza, Denver, CO.

Apple Park, Menlo, CA.

Sources:

"Google Acquires Keyhole" – The Wall Street Journal

Google Earth Studio – FAQ

An Earth Studio Irregularity

I manually specified a negative altitude in the animation studio. Looking up at the underside of the texture mapped to the planet's surface, many lines from the bases of 3D structures comprising Denver's virtual model were masked, producing a scene reminiscent of shattered glass. I exported a still for manipulation, pictured below among other graphics designed from Google Earth scenes.